In Like a Lion (not a Detroit Lion)

March is here and today the temperature in Kansas City is to be in the sunny 50’s. Hooray! The weather story about March is that if it comes in like a lion it goes out like a lamb (and vice versa). Since this week has been pretty tame – you might expect that the end of the month could be trouble. But maybe not…

As most of you know, I am from the city of Detroit, home of the Detroit Lions. Believe me, I know a thing or two about those Lions. I suffered through the 0-16 season (the only 16 game winless season in NFL history). I remember such notable head coaches as Tommy Hudspeth, Darryl Rogers, and Rick Forzano. “Who?” you ask. Exactly my point. In my lifetime the Lions have won exactly one playoff game (in 1991). I know the Lions. So if our month’s meteorology is going to go out like those Lions then I think it will mean-- that we will have little organization, little aggression, and little worry of anything even remotely close to a mean storm. In fact if the Detroit Lions were playing the lambs (and I was a betting man), I’d put my money on the lambs. As a lamb might say, “The Lions are baaaaaaaaaaad!”

Of course, as anyone who ever watched Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom with Marlin Perkins knows (Remember that show? Now that was must see TV!): it’s not supposed to be that way. Lions mutilate lambs. It’s not even close to a fair fight. Lions chase them down, beat them up and conclude the evening with a tasty leg of lamb dinner. Lambs have no chance against a ferocious lion. That’s just the way it is.

Of course, that is also what makes Isaiah’s comments so compelling when he wrote that the lion and the lamb would lie down together—in the new kingdom. In Isaiah’s vision, the kingdom of God would be characterized when one time enemies like lions and lambs are friends. The community that God is building is one where the old rules die and new hopes and dreams become alive.

It seems that God’s plan for His people is to be a community where age, race, background, economics, nationality and/or any of other barriers that sometime might exist between people come crashing down through Jesus Christ. We are to enjoy a common bond in Christ—that is bigger and stronger than any other loyalty or any other bond. Can I just say it—I long for those types of relationships and that type of community. Because this I know, when the storms of life come (whether it’s in March or any other month) through Christ and his people, we will overcome!